An Ode To My Empty Notebooks:

Oops.

Your blank pages weren’t meant to stay blank.

I meant to fill you with clever metaphors,

colorful similes, and imagery so beautiful

they would make a grown man cry.

You were supposed to house rejected drafts

of a novel soon to be.

I could blame college; I could blame work.

I could, but I can’t, because in between the

two, I have nothing but free time to write.

Instead, you rest in a pile on my desk,

silently hating me for rejecting you and

binging more Shameless on Netflix.

I want to be a New York Time bestseller.

I’m not sure how I’d accomplish that

when I hardly pick up a pen to write

at least the opening paragraph of a draft.

But, nevertheless, I call myself a writer.

“Have you written anything?” they ask.

“Of course,” I lie. Unless they count

research papers on Edgar Allan Poe,

I’ve written nothing.

One day, I’ll open you, and I’ll force

you to swallow some words.

You may hate them; you may wish for

dialogue while I force-feed you

forced descriptions written in haste.

But hey, at least I’ll be writing.